Boy Scouts Celebrate PC 100th World Jamboree August 2, 2007

As an Eagle Scout (and former Order of the Arrow member) I can say with some authority that there are three fundamental and essential traditions that define what the Boy Scout movement is all about:

1. A camp fire.

2. Cooking meat with fire.

3. Farting, making fart jokes, and laughing uproariously about it.

Apparently, these venerable traditions have been abandoned at the recent 100th World Jamboree in England.

Youngsters celebrating the 100th birthday of the scouting movement have been banned from eating burgers and bangers – because they might offend youngsters of other religions.

And the scouts have been banned from having campfires and instead have to sit round a potplant – because of safety fears.

The traditional camping food made way for vegetarian dishes – a hundred years after Scout founder Lord Baden-Powell took his first group of 20 boys to the great outdoors.

Give me a frickin’ break.

Perhaps not all is lost. There is reason to hope that Tradition No. 3 is still alive and well. These Scouts at the recent World Jamboree are clearly having fun as they desperately try to clear the air:

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As a former Boy Scout, I have done my share of farting, eating burnt meat and having fun at Jamborees. In fact it was as a Boy Scout that I learn the art of lighting farts (I think I got a Merit Badge for that too).

I was a Life Scout and OA, and I concur – this is not scouting. We had Jewish scouts with us on campouts, and they ate whatever they wanted, as did we. And the point is to teach boys dangerous skills in a safe environment – how to handle a knife, an axe, a fire, etc. That was the original vision and purpose of Scouting – to avoid the pussification of boys and assist in their transition to manhood.

When Son-Michael was a Webelo — I became a “BOY Scout” Leader of his den. We all went on campouts, etc. I even have my Polar Bear patch! It was a scream — with 7 of the 10 boys in the den on Ritalin — no WONDER men don’t want to be leaders!!! They are smart and stay away for that kinda challenge.

A catalyst for all these maybe-unpleasant changes, Michael, maybe wimmin-folk. . With the need for leaders, scouts have brought females into their “cave” — the man’s world. So scouts gets gentrified and domesticated.

No meat? No campfires? Nothing dangerous? No fun!! Sounds “sissy” to me. I was a Girl Scout when I was a kid. We did the knife thing… the campfire thing… the meat thing. The ropes, archery, BB-guns, hand axes, you name it. And we farted, told nasty and scary stories, and were generally unruly also — but we pretended that we were ladies.

I have to admit however — that I don’t know of any female who has ever lighted a fart. You guy got us on that one.

Well, as the daughter of a scout-master and sister to five brothers, I can say I learned every skill but fart-lighting. I can still tie a mean noose, and sharpen my own buck knife on a whetstone, build a fire, barbeque and grill, gut and clean a fish, read a map and use a compass, know the constellations, kill a rattlesnake if I have to (in Florida, you have to sometimes), and patch an innertube.

Only lately did I learn to usefully fake helplessness when my car battery dies. That can be quite fun!

Of course, all the vegan scouts can do is fart and fart and fart. Too much roughage will do that.

I was an Eagle Scout and in the Order of the Arrow. The sheer fun, excitement, comraderie, and sense of honor and pride I experienced was essentital to my later success in life. The value is not so much being able to tie a bowline, but *knowing* you can tie a bowline as well as many other things that few others in the work-a-day world can do. Scouting made me a better man than I would have been otherwise.

Robert Baden-Powell must be turning over in his grave! The Scout movement was ment to teach young men how to survive in and enjoy the outdoors. As a Life scout and leader for 28 years it sickens me to see political correctness take this final part of masculinity and destroy it.

I was a Life Scout, OA and God & Country award, and scouting helped me in many ways. Learning the proper way to camp, tie knots, canoe, survival techniques, hiking and on and on, all have come in handy in my adulthood. Being a Boy Scout if the one thing I have never regretted in my life.

Michael,
Because I knew all my knots, when I went into the Coast Guard, I already knew all the ones we had to learn. I ended up helping a lot of people learn their knots, which won me a whole bunch of kudos (and got my shoes shined up for free).

My now-27-year-old son is Eagle and OA. He learned so very much about everything a man should know, and it also assisted him in his army career. I remember him telling us that he was banned from eating beans at camp, and generally when he came home from any camp experience, we rode home with the windows of our van WIDE open.

Besides his father, his scoutmaster was one of the biggest positive influences on his life. I cannot imagine what he would have been like without scouting. To this day, he holds as true as possible to scout law.

I will rue the day (and may I be long dead before I see it) that the scouts will lose their manliness.

I just finished my first In-N-Out burger. Pretty good. About the same as Whataburger, maybe just a wee bit better. Actually reminded me a bit of Carter Burger. The fries are pretty good, too.

I was a Girl Scout for a while, but I quit around the time we started getting into our teens, because the girls turned really mean. They started treating the least popular girl really badly (stealing her pocket money, filling her sleeping bag with shaving cream, etc.), and I figured I was their next target, so I got out while the getting was good.

Can’t say I really regret leaving…but I can say, for the boys’ benefit, that if a guy was an Eagle Scout, I see that as a HUGE positive.

Oh, I see that my less than and greater than symbols got taken for html code and vaporized half my comment. Curse me for a novice.

It was supposed to say (essentially) that Cubs Scout dens are led by moms, Webelos are the transition, and Boy Scouts are led by men: all as part of the master plan to foster boys’ evolution from child to man.

I will rue the day (and may I be long dead before I see it) that the scouts will lose their manliness.

Mommynator, start ruing.

I wrote this post as a comedy piece, but it really makes me very sad. Back in my day, a World Jamboree was a huge international event that brought people together around the concept of camping with camp fires. How the hell did the Boy Scouts end up sitting around a frickin’ potted plant?

This is ridiculous! There are boys from a number of different religions in my son’s Boy Scout troop. There is always an alternative vegetarian meal cooked and available on camp outs but the boys have a choice. They aren’t all forced to adopt the most restrictive religious guidelines. What kind of wimps run the international Jamboree?

If it’s all boys, why can’t they say “Boy?” What kind of idiots hold a (not-Boy) Scout Jamboree on a wildlife preserve/island that doesn’t allow campfires? Did no one on the planning committee notice that little restriction? And Portapotties? And a frickin’ Internet cafe? And isn’t there some kind of religious connection to scouting anyway?

“Men” who allow themselves to be emasculated, and who allow boys to be emasculated before their testicles even drop need to be called out for the wussies that they are at every step. And NO ONE should send their child to this wuss-fest. Doing so is telling your boy that it is OK to trade in their “banger” for a fish taco.

Lighting farts? We used to call that “Blue Darts.” Good ol’ Beanie Weenies, pork and beans with campfire roasted hot dogs cut up in them. Methane.

We had hatchets and sheath knives (you had to earn a Totin’ Chit); Flints and Steels to light real fires; BB guns (we ate the squirrels we shot) and archery; dodgeball or random tackling each other, called (“Smear the … ” never mind).

When we misbehaved we got spanked, every adult had permission to spank every kid. I hear kids say, “If you touch me I’ll tell my parents.” Heck, if an adult hit me, I would NEVER tell my Dad. Dad would hit me as soon as I told him, then he would call the adult and find out what I did and then hit me some more. Thank God for spankings. I was worse than any ADHD kid and I got hit a lot. Nowadays they drug the kids into submission.

A few years back there was a book, The War Against Boys. We need to go back and re-read it.

The Scouts need to go back and reassert the core values that make them the premier group for making leaders. Scouts and the Military are the last institutions we have.

On my honor I will do my best –
to do my duty to God and my Country, and to obey the Scout law.
To help other people at all times.
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

This post got me thinking about the ways scouting has influenced my life. I think perhaps the way it most influenced me was in race relations. I grew up in a small town in central NJ. The only non whites there were a couple of Puerto Rican families with sons my age who were good friends. My first real experience with a black person was my scoutmaster, Henry Hampton. What made the situation unique was that he was the only black person in the troop. Other than him it was all white. But that man did more for us kids in teaching us what we needed to know. I will never be able to thank him enough. We loved him and he loved us. He will always be one of my heroes.

My mom was our Girl Scout leader — and she was awesome. She had a good group of gals who were great assistants. Some of the women were military wives — and they were the best. I learned the military really taught families how to cope in cases of emergency and those gals passed a lot of that info on to us.

We had a few moms who were nurses — and it was through the Girl Scouts that I learned most of the pertinent healthy information about sex and growing up.

Our troop set a goal that we were going to make enough money to spend a week at a dude ranch. We were an equestrian troop that regularly went horse-back riding together and took equestrian lessons together too. It wasn’t just a lot of talk. We saved hundreds of dollars each so that we could do this — and we even made enough money to take a train to get there by ourselves. I learned a lot about setting goals, taking responsibility, following through, and seeing the fruits of my/our labor.

Geoff — a few years ago a female friend of mine was a Boy Scout leader in an Explorer troop — and there were female Boy Scout Explorers in her troop.

Explorers (now “Venturers” I guess) is an entirely different beast – it’s not intended to help transist boys to men, it’s meant to foster early adult development, and it is entirely coed. It’s basically for those who feel that they are beyond the basic scouting experience. I don’t know how widespread it is, but the Explorer posts I’m familiar with emphasized some career or hobby, like computer, science, or sailing.

and, of course, the eternal classic: Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. For other mathematical mnemonics, my parents used Oscar Has A Heap Of Apples, but SOHCAHTOA (pronounced “sah-cuh-toe-uh”) does the job for me. Oh, and All Students Take Calculus. I’ll go ahead and explain that one: in quadrant I, all three trig functions (sine, cosine, tangent) are positive; in quadrant II, sine is positive; in quadrant III, tangent is positive; and in quadrant IV, cosine is positive. So that’s A, S, T, C.

Mrs. Peel, when I started my algebra book earlier this year, it was the first math I’ve done since about 1993, but I immediately remembered Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. I remember hearing Sohcahtoa, but I don’t remember what it’s for.

Michael, you don’t need to know Every Good Boy Does Fine to tune a bass (or a guitar), just to read the music. A guitar is Every Autumn Day George Buys Eggs. A bass is (and I swear this is how I was taught) Every Autumn Day George. Presumably because bass players can only think in sentence fragments. Like this one.

Finally, I’m a Life Scout and Order of the Arrow. I regret a lot about my wasted youth, but one of the biggest is that I never got my Eagle (I did everything but the Eagle Project). I never learned the knots in Scouts. I know a few, but that’s from rock climbing, where you really need to pay attention to whether you’re tying that figure eight properly.

Just last week I came off the mountains from Philmont. With a 73 mile trek and back to back dinners that included ‘Supper 10′ – the mexican dinner and black beans and rice, number 3 was alive and well with all 11 of us.

Thank you for posting this! My sons were in scouts and I was once a Cub Master. This brought back some great memories of foil pack dinners and peach cobbler. The first time I ever went camping was with boy scouts. This is were I learned my sons love of pocket knives and fire!

As a former Eagle I have to say that boys just need to have some good clean fun on campouts while maintaining the principles of Scouting; mainly the Scout Law and Oath. Why in the world would the BSA enforce vegetarian principles on all the boys in attendance? Is that one of the 10 laws of Scouting? NO!!!!!
A scout is: Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

I like the timber hitch. I’ve never actually had occasion to use it, but it’s pretty cool. I can also make slip knot handcuffs in under a second. This was valuable for keeping a group of scouts in line. I did the scout master thing for a few years. I wish it was more voluntary than it is in LDS wards. You can find men willing to take boys camping once in awhile, but finding the true green-kool-aid drinking BSAers is much harder. Too much paperwork, meetings, gunghoism, and MONEY involved.

Once I was an Eagle, a good ole Eagle too………Troop 1 Gilwell.
That one hand bowline is also called a draggin’ bowline on the Fire dept.
Toughest thing I ever did on ‘ ‘ outings was try to get some sleep thru the snores of the Scoutmaster and his cohorts.

Explorers is a coed scouting group so naturally there would be females at the World Scouting Jamboree. As a mother of an eagle scout at the Jamboree, I am proud of the man my son has become and know that scouting has played an important part in his development.

>>>That’s the point of scouting: Cub Scouts have Den Mothers, since the children are 12) are run by men, as a planned part of the transition from boyhood to manhood.<<<

Thank you, Jeff! As Mom to two Scouts, I’ve been on my share of campouts when there weren’t enough qualified men to go along, but it’s always as an observer only. At times I’ve had to bite my tongue, take a walk, or simply close my eyes in order not to quash their budding manhood – no matter how base and disgusting it may be ;-). I don’t want women in authority over my young men. No matter how fantastic any woman is, she CANNOT teach a boy to be a man.

I have been a Scout since I was 8 yrs of age. A Sixer, then a Patrol Leader, a Queen’s Scout and now an Adult Leader. Scouting is as relevant today as it has ever been. I have been running a Cub Scout Pack in Australia for the past 2 yrs and we have constructed it on a ‘back to the future’ kind of approach. We hike, we cook on fires, we learn skills, we play rough, we get dirty and muddy and grotty and the whole while the ‘game’ is underpinned by the values that our Founder (and my Hero!) Baden Powell wrote about.

Today Scouting reaches 28 Million young people and it is bigger than ever before in our history. Scouting is not a Chrisitan Movement – there are more Muslim Scouts in the world today than those who would profess to be Christian – but this is irrelevant…

And now my son is a Scout – and I look to those around him who are not and I can already see that he has confidence, skills and capacity that they lack. No wonder there are 28 Million Scouts! I don’t know any Youth Movement or Organisation that can claim that…

As a former Scout, myself, I have to agree that Scouting has fundamentally changed. Scouting is about learning to work together, despite our differences, for the sake of bettering ourselves in character and citizenship, while contributing to betterment of our communities, families, and religious organizations.

When I was in Scouts, we learned to identify each other’s differences, relish them, and respect one another. It wasn’t about “you can’t because” it was “do as you are convicted and respect the wishes of others.” We never pushed our beliefs on others, but we respected and honored those with different beliefs. If we had someone Jewish in our unit, we had our ham sandwiches, cleaned the cook gear very well, and help him prepare his meal – or he went first, then we did. Either way, we weren’t offended and neither was he.

Simply put, character, personal responsibility, and honor has been left at the edge of our units and camps. It is time that we teach our youth the ability to be leaders, not just followers. After all is said and done, that’s what Scouting is about…developing leaders.

I just saw that someone asked me a question on this thread that I never answered. Sorry, I was on TDY at the time. Anyway, SOHCAHTOA is the mnemonic for trig functions: Sine = opposite over hypotenuse, cosine = adjacent over hypotenuse, and tangent = opposite over adjacent.

Nice posts. I am an Eagle with a son who also made Eagle. We attended Philmont in 2004 and 2008 and these will be some of the best memories of our lives. Our Ranger was a female cadet from the Air Force Academy and taught the crew “Fart Baseball”.

Nice posts. I am an Eagle with a son who also made Eagle. We attended Philmont in 2004 and 2008 and these will be some of the best memories of our lives. Our Ranger was a female cadet from the Air Force Academy and taught the crew “Fart Baseball”. No shame and a lot of laughs………….